"julien donkey-boy" (1999)
Harmony Korine followed up his remarkable films "Kids" (as screenwriter) and "Gummo" with 1999's "Julien Donkey-Boy" which is just as ground-breaking on many levels. Filmed according to the Dogma 95 principles which require location shooting with natural lighting, the film is grainy and distorted, and includes scenes with people who didn't even know they were in a motion picture. Tiny hidden cameras were worn by some of the actor-characters out into the real world and those scenes, edited into the narrative, illuminate the motivations of our central players. The music comes mostly from the characters playing or singing themselves, although there is a recurring musical theme, the familiar and emotional aria from Gianni Schicchi, "O Mio Babbino Caro" which is lifted from a televised ice-skating performance that two of the characters are watching at one point during the film. This music and the beautiful but dysmorphic images of the figure skater interrupt the narrative at several points, and offer stark contrast to this basically disturbing tale of a very dysfunctional family.
Julien it turns out is schizophrenic. His mother died, giving birth to the youngest child of three, Chris (Evan Neumann), now a teenager who though slight in build, desires to be a wrestler. The middle child, daughter Pearl (the director's muse, Chloë Sevigny), is the quiet heart of the family, almost a madonna-like figure who has assumed the role of the mother at family gatherings. She is in fact several months pregnant. She never mentions the father, and during the course of the film, we began to suspect that the child was a product of incest. She is particularly idolized by Julien (Ewen Bremner), the oldest child who bears an uncanny resemblance to the television actor Michael Richards... imagine Kramer (of Seinfeld) with false gold-plated teeth. Julien is plainly unbalanced. You might find him walking down the middle of a street talking to his "voices." The director modeled this title character after his own uncle, now in an institution. An early scene even leaves us with the impression that he may be harmful to small children.
And then there is the father, a piece of work himself, who sometimes dances in his room wearing only red flowered boxer shorts and a gas mask. He is a tyrant to his children, offering no love, but only abusive "motivational" tirades. He is played to perfection by the German director/actor Werner Herzog, whose voice we recognized instantly from the narrative work he has done in several of his own films. No wonder Julien has slipped "the surly bonds of earth" with very little chance that he will ever touch the face of God.
The chop-cut editing, episodic narrative, and irrational behavior may so be off-putting that you might give up on this film early... it's no more pleasant to watch than was Gummo and only slightly less outrageous: several blind characters, an armless magician, an apparently senile grandmama, family wrestling matches, and the old man, who would just love for one of his sons to put on their dead mother's wedding dress and dance with him, but if you stay with it, letting the apparently random incidents form connections in your mind, you will be lead into realms of insight and emotion that will shake you like lightning bolts.
There is a spiritual core at the heart of "Julien Donkey-Boy." The family attends an animated prayer service at a black church, frequent references are made to heaven... Julien even thinks he went there once to visit his mother, and the iconic image of this strange film is Pearl, wandering through a field of tall waving grain, singing the Agnus Dei softly to herself. There are moments when, well, there are moments when...
If this movie doesn't give you new insight into the sad, troubled world of societal refugees and reduce you at least once to tears, perhaps you're listening to the wrong voices in your own head.
